


Juno Steel and the Tales to be Told

by Alina_writes



Category: The Mechanisms (Band), The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Crossover, F/F, Found Family, M/M, Rita Appreciation (Penumbra Podcast), The Mechanisms-Typical Violence, buddy is mom, juno has a good day, liberal use of the f bomb, nastya and jet bond over brain cell custody, nureyev needs therapy, vespa receives appreciation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:42:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25224799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alina_writes/pseuds/Alina_writes
Summary: What shall we do with nine immortal space pirates and six crime family members? Is it A) let them have an epic, western-flavored standoff, or B) have them chill together and discover that they are Not So Different, or C) let the space pirate sing songs that coincidentally reflect the stories of each crime family members, or D) all of the above?
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko/Vespa, Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina
Comments: 96
Kudos: 170





	1. I. The Fool/The Red Joker

The air was filled with the cacophony of blaster bolts and exploisions, while Jonny’s laughter threatened to rise above it all. Who could have thought that robbing a measly jewelry auction would turn into such _fun_?

It started as a simple and boring enough stint. He and six other Mechanisms—discounting Brian, who had a ship to pilot, and Nastya, who had locked herself inside the engine room, which was _gross_ —would storm a jewelry auction in some pretentious, twinkling city to pick up a big enough diamond to use in their next performance of _Ulysses Dies at Dawn_. Shots would be fired, a great many display cabinets would be shattered into showers of lethal shards, and people would be running around like screaming, headless chickens. There would be violence, but not _good_ violence.

Now, watching blaster fire—both friendly and hostile—obliterate an antique clock two feet away from where he was crouching, Jonny decided that this stint was, in fact, the best he had had in about half a century.

“What the fuck are you doing, Jonny?” Tim yelled from somewhere in the room. “You gonna hide and twiddle your thumb after all that whining about not getting to shoot people?”

“Have you ever heard of ‘taking in the moment,’ Timmy?” Jonny shouted back, adjusting his grip on his revolver and ready himself to leap.

“Nope and don’t care!” Came the pert answer, and then, “Ow shit—”

“It’s about time, Ransom! I thought you cut his tendons the first time!” A woman growled, with a voice that sounded like she gargled pebbles every morning in her life.

“Well then I guess I must have missed, haven’t I?” Retorted a man’s voice, smooth as silk even in the heat of battle.

“I don’t think you did, actually,” Marius piped up, his voice cracking a bit in his effort to be heard. “That was a clean slice across the Achilles t—” there was a sound of metal burying itself in flesh, and the rest of Marius’ words were lost in a long, wordless groan.

Well, there was the cue for his dramatic reentry. Jonny drew a deep breath to fill his lungs, then he hopped onto the auction table and fired two shots into the air.

The pause of gunfire and blades was brief, but it was long enough for Jonny to see the people who had made his day exponentially more interesting. There was a man, tall, broad-shouldered, who swatted Raphaella out of the air with a table as if it were a rolled-up newspaper. Partially sheltered by an overturned shelf, a lady with an eyepatch and a trench coat was driving Ashes back with round after round of precise laser blasts. Another man, this one so sharply dressed that Jonny's cornea ached just from looking at him, danced around the Toy Soldier, keeping the wooden figure at bay with his glowing plasma knife. Finally, two women, one with plumes of scarlet ringlets and the other with spikey green hair, parried Tim’s vicious attacks with skillful and coordinated knife-work and blaster fires. There was something familiar about the two women, but Jonny couldn’t put his finger on it, neither did he had the time to find out right now.

“Individuals!” He bellowed, stomping his foot on the table for emphasis. “It has been tremendously entertaining to trade unfriendly fire with you, but I’m afraid this will be the end of the line for you now, because we are—”

He didn’t even see the broad-shouldered man move, but he did feel the impact of an airborne chair knocking him to the floor and shattering the majority of his ribs. His revolver flew out of his grip and landed a few feet away.

“Does **_nobody_** respect the sanctity of theatricality anymore?” Jonny hissed as he crawled towards his gun, ignoring the sensation of his broken ribs knitting themselves back together. His fingers closed around the grip of the revolver, and he spun around with a cackle of victory, only to feel searing heat strike his gun and the hand holding it.

“I would advise you not to try that again, honey,” the woman with red hair purred, one of her twin blasters still smoking from the shot that took out his gun and half of his right hand. “Because if you do, I will be forced to shoot you somewhere far more important, and even with that impressive regeneration ability, you are not going to enjoy the process. Now, be a dear and tell your crew to stand down.”

Jonny laughed, a full-bellied and hearty guffaw, into the barrel of her unwavering guns. “No can do, ma’am,” he grinned. In one swift movement, he sprang back on his feet and whipped out—with his uninjured hand—a spare pistol that he kept tucked between two of his overlapping belts. “How’s about you do that yourself?”

Redhead took a step back, but there was no fear in her hard, weathered eye. “That’s not going to be as easy as you think, sweetheart.” She gestured to the side with one of her pistols.

Surveying the scene around them, Jonny could see what she meant. At least, from her point of view, that is. Among the rubbles of the ruined auction room, members of the two crews were locked in various forms of stalemate. In the center of the room, Redhead had her blasters trained on Jonny, her back pressed against that of the green-haired woman, who was pinning Tim to the ground with a knife to his throat. Off to one side, Broad Shoulders had one knee on Ivy’s chest and a large gun under Raphaella’s chin. Several feet away, Lancelot-with-An-Eyepatch aimed his gun at the fuel tank of the flamethrower held by Ashes, who looked almost interested in the outcome. Across the room, one of Sharp Face’s plasma knives was buried in the stomach of a very dead Marius, while the other was raised towards the Toy Soldier, which smiled amiably at him.

“Well now, my dears,” Redhead said, her blasters hardly wavering as she spoke, “it seems that we’ve reached quite a stalemate here.”

“Actually,” Ivy piped up in a conversational tone, as if she didn’t feel the full weight of the man on her chest. “I think you’ll find that we have all the advantage in this situation.”

“Oh yeah?” Eyepatch yelled from his spot. “Mind explaining to the class how you guys are supposed to come out on top when I shoot this fuel tank here and barbecue your friend with the pretty eyeliner?”

“We Can’t Die, Silly!” The Toy Soldier trilled, causing Sharp Face’s grip to tighten on the knife. “Not In Any Way That Truly Matters!”

“Many have thought so, sweethearts,” Redhead’s lips twitched into a half-smile.

“And all of them were wrong,” Green Hair growled. “Let’s just get this over with, Buddy.” She eyed Tim with a ferocious disdain that could collapse a red giant.

“Vespa—” Redhead began, but Jonny lowered his gun, realization crashing into him like a runaway interstellar train.

“Buddy and Vespa?” He exclaimed. “Vespa Ilkay and Buddy Aurinko? The Queens of the Cerberus Province?”

And then everything clicked in his brain: the group of skilled professionals who were capable of combating the Mechanisms to a standstill, the flawless co-ordination between their blades and guns, the steady fire blazing behind Redhead’s eye…

“Holy fuck guys it’s Buddy and Vespa!” Thrusting his revolver back in its holster, Jonny was practically bouncing as he spun around to address the rest of the Mechanisms, who lowered their weapons with varying degrees of intrigue. The Aurinko family, however, kept their weapons at the ready.

“You mean the Solar crime bosses you won’t shut up about?” Ashes put down their flamethrower and pulled out a cigarette, their head cocked in curiosity.

“You’re really Vespa Ilkay?” Tim stared up in awe at Vespa, who responded by growling and pressing her knife harder against his jugular.

“So, we’re not going to fight them now?” Rapaella retracted the razors on her wings and flew back and away from Broad Shoulders' gun, eyeing it with undisguised Scientific Interest.

“Yes, yes, and no,” Jonny rolled his eyes; it was just like his crew to not pay attention to his slides on “Renown Criminals We Must Find, Fight, and Write Songs Of”. “And do show some goddam respect; we are in the presence of literal _legends_. Which reminds me…” Jonny spun on his heels, feeling positively like a little kid in a candy store.

“You, good sir, must be Jet Siquliak, the man who stole the Iris of Jupiter!” Jonny beamed at Broad Shoulders, who met his smile with a dark look.

“As for you two…” Jonny squinted at Eyepatch and Sharp Face, searching for names and came up empty. “New additions, I guess.” He gave an apologetic shrug.

“What the hell is happening?” Eyepatch demanded, his voice overlapping with Jet’s question, “Do you know this man, Buddy?”

“Can’t say I do, darling.” Buddy’s eye narrowed. “May I ask, dear boy, to whom do my family owe the pleasure of this… appreciation?”

“Ah, yes!” Jonny bowed and gestured with a flourish. “Allow me a brief moment to introduce ourselves, the Mechanisms, the immortal space pirates of the starship _Aurora_!” He glanced around to room to see that all eyes—including those of _Buddy and Vespa_ —were on him; it felt _fantastic_.

“The who of the what?” Sharp Face whispered to Eyepatch, who shrugged helplessly.

“There’s Gunpowder Tim, our master at arms!” Jonny pointed at Tim, who smiled hopefully at Vespa, the latter having sheathed her knives and moved to stand beside Buddy.

“I can still gut you, Pretty Hair,” she declared. Tim’s face fell.

“Ashes O’Reilly, quartermaster!”

“Sup,” Ashes blew a smoke ring towards Eyepatch and winked. 

“Ivy Alexandria, our ship’s archivist!”

“You look approximately 1 foot taller than in the records I’ve found on you,” Ivy remarked as Jet helped her up.

“I believe it is the effect of the jacket,” Jet replied. “I have not gained height as far as I’m concerned.”

“Raphaella la Cognizi, science officer!”

“Would you mind terribly if I borrow this gun, Mr. Siquliak?” Raphaella stared, her hands already reaching halfway toward it.

Jet returned the weapon in question back in its holster on his back. “I would, in fact,” he said in a voice that could cut through diamonds.

“The Toy Soldier… present.”

“Pleased To Make Your Acquaintance!” The Toy Soldier saluted. “You Are Very Shiny And Pointy And I Like You!” It added to Sharp Face, who was inching away from its blinding smile.

“Baron Marius von Raum, our ship’s doctor, but neither a baron nor a doctor.”

“Nor alive, for that matter.” Eyepatch frowned at the body on the floor. “But I thought you said—"

“And last, but the very opposite of least, myself, Jonny D’Ville! Your humble _captain_.” Jonny declared, hoping that this time, just this once, he could have this this—

“ ** _First Mate_**!” Five voices rang out in unison.

Jonny scowled. “Seriously? You won’t let me have this even in front of Buddy Aurinko and Vespa Ilkay?”

“Especially in front of them,” Tim grinned with malice.

“Hang on,” Sharp Face called out. Crouching above the prone body of the not-doctor-nor-baron, he moved to pluck out the plasma knife. “If your crew is truly ‘immortal’ as you claimed, then why is this man—”

“This is a very impressive knife, sir,” Marius chirped as he sat up. “Would you like it back or do I get to keep it?”

“Your regeneration process is much slower this time,” Raphaella remarked over Marius’ pained groan when Sharp Face screamed, kicked him in the chest, and yanked out the knife. “I wonder if it has anything to do with the weapon…” Her bright and terrible eyes trailed towards the plasma knives in question. Sharp Face shrank behind Eyepatch, who shot Raphaella a warning glare.

“Well,” Buddy sighed, lowering her blasters. “Seeing that you have been generous enough in your introduction, I suppose we should respond in kind. This,” she gestured to Sharp Face, “is Peter Ransom, our master thief. And this,” she pointed at Eyepatch, “is Juno Steel, our sometimes Jack-of-all-trades and fulltime moral support.”

“Hey!” Juno protested, while Ransom hid his chuckle under a cough. “I think I’ve done a lot more than just ‘moral support’—”

A loud beeping noise drowned out the rest of Juno’s words. He fished out a communicator from his coat pocket and flipped it open. “Rita?”

“Hi boss I just wanna start this by saying that this was the BEST STANOFF EVER like I’ve seen so many streams where people point their guns or their knives at each other and say awesome lines like ‘this settlement ain’t big enough for the two of us’ but none of them have shiny toy soldiers or ladies with wings or pirates who come back from the dead so I was just so excited watching you guys through the security camera and you really can’t blame me for this okay—”

Juno sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Rita,” he said with forced calmness, “just slow down and tell me why you’re calling.”

“Oh,” squeaked the voice on the other end.“Um, there’s a security blockade closing around the planet?”

“What?!” Every member of the Aurinko family turned towards the comm.

“Rita, when was this and why didn’t you tell us, like, fifteen minutes ago?” Juno shouted into the comm.

“The ship only told me five minutes ago!” the woman sounded like she was on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry, boss, but like I said I was distracted by all this standoff happening and I wanted to listen to the man with the pretty eyeliner introduce everyone!”

“An appreciative audience!” Jonny cried, turning to Tim in triumph. “What was that you said about no one caring about narration?”

“Statistically, someone has to.” Ashes spoke up. Jonny gave them the finger.

“Rita, sweetheart,” Buddy plucked the comm from Juno’s hand, her voice soft and lethal like a silk garotte. “How big is the blockade? Can you hack their communication channel and tell if they are here for _us_ , specifically?”

“I just did that, Captain A, and I got good news and bad ones.”

“Spare us the tension and just tell us, darling.” Buddy’s fingers were white-knuckled around the comm.

“The bad news is the blockade has one hundred gunships, all Titan-class. And I heard from their channel that they are checking every ship leaving the planet.”

“The _Carte Blanche_ can never make it through a blockade of that caliber.” Jet stated, his voice thick with concern.

“But!” Rita exclaimed, as if physically injecting posititvity into her next sentences. “But the good news is, I don’t think they are here for us, Captain A and Mistah Jet. I think they’re here for, um, the person on their channel said some real mean words, but I think they’re here for someone called... Jonny Devil?”

“It’s _D’Ville_.” Jonny said through gritted teeth. “I am _not_ that on the nose with symbolism, those uncultured swine…”

“Regardless of whether or not the blockade is meant for us, we are still stranded on this planet with a large amount of stolen creds, and the damage we’ve done to this place will surely attract the attention of Dark Matters.” Buddy looked like laser cannon charging up as she declared. “We need to find to way to get off-planet. Right now.”

“I say we just kill these people and hand them over to whoever is trying to get them.” Vespa said, a knife materializing in her hand. “They did start this whole fight and got us trapped here in the first place, after all.”

“Did you forget the little thing called ‘immortality,’ Vespa?” Juno pointed out. “Ransom stabbed that doctor-baron guy to hell and back, and now he’s over there playing paper-scissors-stone with the wooden doll.”

“I Win!” The Toy Soldier cheered, wrapping its open palm around the closed fist of one despondent Marius.

“Do you have a better plan, Steel?” Vespa sneered.

That was when Jonny saw the solution coming to him, as naturally and effortlessly as a meteor smashing itself to piece against the nearest planet.

“How big is your ship?” Jonny asked. He could already hear Nastya yelling at him for what he was about to suggest, but what’s a little quarrel with his little sister compared to the opportunity to help the Aurinko’s?

“The _Carte Blanche_ is an S-class freighter,” Jet supplied, “it is lighter and nimbler than other vessels of the same class due to the modifications I have done on it, but it has very little firepower—”

“Can we fit her in hanger #4?, Ivy?” Jonny cut him off and turned to Ivy, who nodded.

“I think I see where this is heading,” Jet commented. 

“I don’t,” Juno said.

“Your ship can’t make it through the blockade, but our ship, the _Aurora_ , can,” Jonny explained. “We can carry your ship inside ours and ram our way through them like a plasma cutter through—well, pretty much through everything, I guess.” He thought about the carnage to come and sighed wistfully, “I can almost hear the explosions even now.”

“Are you suggesting that we put our ship, our _only_ means of transport, inside your _hypothetically_ invincible ship, and trust you to execute a maneuver that will almost certainly _kill us all_?” Vespa stared at Jonny, her eyes wide with disbelief and outrage.

“Yes to all but the 'killing us all' part!” Jonny answered, brightly. “It’ll be fun!”

“Buddy…” Vespa gave Buddy a pleading look.

Buddy took Vespa’s hands in hers and held them tight. “I know, my love,” she whispered. “I wish there was a better way, but right now, this may be our only chance of leaving this planet.”

Vespa looked up, her mouth pressed into a thin, razor-sharp line. “If anything goes wrong, I’ll kill all of them, immortality be damned,” she hissed.

“I understand,” Buddy brushed her lips against Vespa’s knuckles. “And believe me, love, I won’t stop you.”

Then, Buddy Aurinko pulled herself to her full height and turned to address the room. Even now, with her weapons holstered and her hands bared, Buddy Aurinko blazed with the strength and authority.

She was everything Jonny wanted to be. 

“Rita,” she said into the comms, “bring the Carte Blanche to the landing platform of the auction house in three minutes. Keep an eye out for any Dark Matters personnel while you’re on your way, dear.”

“Yes, Captain A!” Came the chipper response.

“Ransom, are the creds we came here for secured?”

“Affirmative, Captain.” Ransom tapped an elegant finger against the satchel on his back.

“Jet, Juno, you two keep a lookout for any ground-level disturbance.”

“Yes, Buddy.” “Alright.”

“Vespa?” There was something warm and fragile in Buddy’s voice as she pressed Vespa’s hand. "Are you with me, love?"

“I’m okay, Buddy,” Vespa sqeezed the hand in hers. “I’ve got your back.”

“Good.” Buddy turned to Jonny. “We will accept your assistance, Captain D’Ville,” she said. “Have your ship and crew be ready in three minutes. We will discuss the terms of your payment once we've breached the blockade.”

Jonny felt his eyes stinging with warmth. “Sure,” he managed to say without his voice cracking. “Ivy, patch a call to—”

“Quiet, Jonny. I’m trying to get my Mechanism to send a message to Brian and I need to concentrate.” Ivy had her hands on either sides of her temple and her eyes closed. A faint whirring noise was coming from within her skull.

As the two crews of criminals went about their tasks before the ships arrived, Ashes sauntered by and extended a cigarette to him. “Better luck next century, _First Mate_ ,” they said.

“You do know that I’m only refraining from killing anyone out of respect for our guests, O’Reilly?” Jonny glared, but took the cigarette anyway.

“I do know you are having what the kids call a “fanboy” moment,” Ashes smiled like a cat that figured out how to open the canary’s cage. “It’s cute, actually.”

“Get fucked, Ashes.” Jonny glared, balefully. “And please tell me someone has that stupid diamond.”

“I think the Toy Soldier has it,” Tim said with a shrug. “It was holding it when the Aurinko’s turned up.”

“I Ate It!”

“You what?!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do I like Jonny as a character? Yes.  
> Do I love the complexity of his morality and backstory? Of course.  
> Will I bully him relentlessly? Heck yeah. 
> 
> Next up: Nastya and Jet, holders of the brain cell.


	2. II. The Chariot and the Ace of Hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Chariot: A triumph; a breakthrough; an inventive solution  
> The Ace of Hearts: Emotional, spiritual, or creative flow  
> In which Aurora sets up a playdate between her girlfriend and the nice mechanic she just met

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: mentions of drug use, threats of violence (of the Mechanisms persuasion)

The _Carte Blanche_ , tethered the floor of hanger #4, shuddered every time the _Aurora_ crashed into a part of the blockade.

Jet made his way through the ship, securing the appliances that could be fastened, bolted, or stuck to the walls; those that couldn’t—mostly Rita’s snacks—he tucked into storage compartments and locked the doors.

It helped anchoring him, this process of order and security. His hands did not ache for weapons or chemical stimuli when they were busy preventing Buddy’s books from falling off the shelf, nor when they were putting away the tableware from their previous family meal. It felt easier to breathe through the relentless tremors when his thoughts were centered on calling Juno out for shirking his dishwashing duty.

The other members of the Aurinko family were at the bridge of the _Aurora_ , watching its heavy guns demolish the gunships that formed the blockade. Jet remembered how they looked, thrown into sharp relief by the lights of the explosions: Rita monitoring the communication channel of the blockade, her head whipping rapidly between her comms and the readouts she shared with the brass-faced pilot; Juno staring unblinkingly into the fray, his fists white-knuckled at his sides and his mouth a grim, hard line; the Thief standing with his arms crossed, his face a meticulously crafted mask of apathy; Vespa screwing her eyes shut, her fingers so intertwined with Buddy’s that it was impossible to tell where one of them ended and the other began; Buddy turning to watch him leave, a small, sad smile on her face as she told him to keep his comms on.

They each had their own way of coping with the things they’ve seen. For Jet, he needed to find a way to wear away the feeling of desolation in his hands.

He checked the engine room of the _Carte Blanche_ , surveying every part of the machinery for places that could be loosened or damaged. There seemed to be none.

He went into the garage, where the Ruby 7 gave a concerned-sounding whistle, even though Jet was sure he had powered off the car once they got onboard the _Aurora_. The headlights flashed, twice, and Jet wondered if this was how the Ruby 7 showed fear.

“It is alright, Ruby,” he told it, laying a hand on its hood. “It will pass, and we will be alright.”

The Ruby 7 whistled again, sounding more at ease this time. Jet sat down with his back pressed against one of the tires, feeling the metal dig into his jacket and, underneath that, his flesh. He breathed, paying attention to the way his lungs continued to work despite the tremors of the ship.

Jet read in a science journal once that Earth was rife with seismic activities called “earthquakes,” and that such activities were the result of fault lines releasing energy trapped beneath the surface of the Earth. The subsequent quakes ranged from almost being imperceptible to catastrophic. Jet imagined the man he used to be, the Unnatural Disaster, pounding his fists against the cage of Jet’s ribs, his frustration building like underground faults gathering energy, waiting for the moment to release the cataclysmic shockwave. For seven years, Jet had tried to keep his past entombed, dreading the aftermath of its emergence. But things had changed. On the day they found the Key to the Curemother, Jet unearthed the Unnatural Disaster, took his bloodstained hands in his, and showed him how to rebuild a life upon rubbles and ashes.

The tremors grew fewer and farther between, and then they stopped. A beep from Jet’s comms alerted him to an incoming call.

“Jet,” Buddy had to raise her voice to be heard over the cheering and whooping in the background, presumably from the Mechanisms. Jet suspected that he heard a harmonica in the mix. “Are you doing alright, darling?”

“I am fine, Buddy,” Jet said. The Ruby 7 whistled, so he added, “The Ruby 7 says that it is doing fine as well.”

“Excellent, the _Aurora_ has successfully cleared the blockade. The… first mate has encouraged our family to explore their ship for a few hours before mealtime, at which point I would like to hold a family meeting. Can I expect to see you then?”

“Of course, Buddy.” Jet stood and stretched, wincing a bit when his spine made a cracking noise. “I will be doing some maintenance work on the _Carte Blanche_ in the meantime.”

“Have fun, then,” even on the other side of the comms, Jet could hear the smile on Buddy’s face. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

Jet was triple-checking the exterior of the _Carte Blanche_ when he heard the sound. At first, he thought it was simply the sound of the _Aurora_ ’s engine operating, given how similar it was to the humming of metal parts, but after listening intently for a while, Jet realized that the noise was too rhythmic and too _melodic_ to purely be the result of machinery. The more he listened to it, the more he could make out the rise and fall of the pitch, the recurring pattern of the noise. It sounded almost like a sentence being repeated over and over, or a song composed of a million gears and pistons and valves.

Straining his ears, Jet tried to determine where the sound came from. As he did so, the noise seemed to grow louder, and he followed it outside the hanger, until he was standing in the corridor that led to the _Aurora_ ’s numerous hangers. Across from hanger #4 was hanger #10, and the control panel of said hanger had been knocked loose during the collision with the blockade, hanging precariously by the wires within, its lights blinking like panicked little eyes. Inside the hanger was utter chaos. The door leading to the vacuum outside was opening and shutting in rapid succession, causing tools and supplies to fly across the hanger with each sudden expulsion of air.

Jet frowned. “That does not look good,” he remarked, to no one in particular. The strange mechanical song, however, grew even louder and more urgent sounding, to the point where he felt as if it was coming from all directions, from the walls around him, the floor beneath him, and the air vents above him.

Jet looked up and around. A thought flashed through his mind. “Is this the _Aurora_ speaking to me?” He asked.

The singing changed briefly into a curt, affirmative note, before resuming the original winding, sinuous tune that seemed to be beckoning its listeners.

“And I assume you want me to repair this control panel, yes?”

Another note of affirmation, this time with a hint of impatience.

Jet looked around for security cameras and found none, which was rather inconvenient. He would have like to make eye contact with the being he was speaking to. “Then I will do it. Can you shut down the power in this section of the ship except for the gravity and oxygen supply? I would prefer not to get blown out of this hanger if I accidentally touched the wrong wires.”

In response, the frantic blinking of the control panel died, and the corridor was plunged into darkness.

With a flashlight clamped in his mouth, Jet fished the tools required from his bag and went to work. Around him, the song of the _Aurora_ was subdued but still present, humming in the darkness like an attentive audience at a play.

Even though the designs of the _Aurora_ ’s electrical system were foreign to him, they followed the same basic principles of most control units, and Jet managed to reconnect the torn wires, wrangle everything back into their rightful place, and slide the panel back inside the wall. “It is done,” he called. “You can turn the powers back on now.”

Light flooded back in the corridor, and Jet discovered three things: 1. the control panel was no longer blinking like a frenzied creature, 2. the door leading out of hanger #10 had stopped malfunctioning, and 3. he was staring into the wide, silvery, and enraged eyes of a young woman in a long coat. Her hair was covered in cobwebs and dust, and there was a metal grate of an air vent on the floor behind her.

“What do you think you’re doing?” She demanded. Then, without waiting for an answer, she shoved Jet out of the way and strode to the control panel, running her slender fingers over the buttons, whispering hurriedly in a language that he didn’t recognize. The _Aurora_ , however, seemed wholly unperturbed by this development. In fact, its song had changed into something livelier and bouncier, as if the core of the _Aurora_ had brightened with the young woman’s arrival.

“This panel was damaged during the confrontation with the blockade,” Jet explained. “The _Aurora_ asked to me repair it, and I did.”

“She asked _you_?” The young woman shot him a look of disbelief and indignation. “Now why would she ask you and not—”

The _Aurora_ ’s song cut in, a placating tune that wove together the tune it sang for the young woman and the one with which it enlisted Jet’s help. The young woman’s expression began to soften as she listened.

“I know it must have hurt you, my light, I really am,” she said. “But I was so scared when I felt a whole section lost its power…” She ran a hand down the wall in front of her, caressing the worn metal as if it was priceless silk.

The Aurora sang something low and gentle, and Jet was reminded of the way Buddy would take Vespa’s face in her hands and whisper reassurance until Vespa’s breathing returned to normal. It seemed to have a similar effect on the young woman.

“Okay,” she touched her forehead gently against the control panel, the beginning of a small smile curling at the edges of her lips. “I’m just, I worry about you, my light. That’s all.”

Another note, even softer and quieter this time.

The young woman smiled. “Me too, my love.” She kissed the tips of her fingers and pressed them against the panel. Then she turned to face Jet.

“ _Aurora_ said I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” she said, glancing briefly at him before looking down, fiddling with a wrench on her utility belt. As her face flushed with what seemed to be embarrassment, Jet noticed that instead of blushing red, the young woman’s face was tinged with the same shade of silver as her eyes. Even her lips had a metallic shine, as if she was wearing a thin layer of foil as lipstick.

She looked up at him again, and Jet realized that this was her attempt to apologize for her outburst.

“It is normal for people to lose their composure when they believe that their loved ones are in danger, especially the ones with whom you have created a deep bond. I once broke down the front door of my friend when I believed she was sick.” He said, surprised by how easily the information fell from his lips. Perhaps he was simply tired after the standoff and the escape. Perhaps he just needed to talk to someone other than a machine after those fifteen minutes of handling the beast within his chest. Or perhaps there was something disarming about this young woman, who was the first crewmember on this ship who showed kindness to a consciousness other than herself, who treated the _Aurora_ with tenderness while her crewmembers would ram the ship into anything with no regard to its— _her_ wellbeing.

“Well, she’s lucky to have _you_ as a friend,” the young woman smirked. “Jonny normally breaks down my door because he can’t find his spare belts.”

Jet considered telling her the time Rita barged into everyone’s rooms looking for the pen tucked behind her ear, but then _Aurora_ cried, a long, pained note that jolted Jet out of his reverie and made the young woman turn paler than her already silvery complexion.

“What is wrong?” He asked.

“A shield generator in sector 6 went offline,” she groaned. “It must have been jostled by all that cannon fire; I’m gonna shoot Tim in the head when I get back…” She turned, hoisted herself up and into the air vent where she crawled out of, and disappeared.

 _Aurora_ ’s song, however, did not leave with the young woman. Instead, it moved down the corridor, repeating in a tune that sounded like an invitation.

“Do you want me to come as well?” Jet asked, and when the ship sang a note of confirmation, he slung his tool bag over one shoulder and started down the corridor in the direction of Aurora’s song. They passed by storage bays where weird, mewing noises seeped out from under the doors, and labs with the doors boarded, bolted, and melded shut. Jet thought he caught a glimpse of the Thief, slipping into one of the supply rooms, but decided that he didn’t care enough to investigate.

At last, he arrived at the chamber of the shield generator. The young woman was cursing, struggling to push aside a collapsed structural grid, which had fallen and crushed the generator.

“Decades, Aurora! Decades I told them not to mess with your internal structures, but did anyone listen to me? No! ‘Oh but I need more guns for bigger explosions!’ Well, we’ll see how Tim feels about explosion when I explode his stupid face—” she shoved, ineffectually. Then she looked up and saw Jet.

“What are you doing here?” She snapped, but Jet could tell that her outburst was more due to embarrassment then anger. “ _Aurora_ , did you bring him here?”

“I thought that you might need some assistance,” Jet offered.

 _Aurora_ sang a soft note, a musical equivalent of “I’m-just-trying-to-help”.

The young woman’s grip on the grid tightened for a moment, then she sighed. “Come along, then.”

She motioned for Jet to join her by the structural grid. As he approached, Jet thought he heard the young woman hissed “traitor” into the air, but he could have been mistaken. Together, they shoved the grid off of the generator.

“Well, Блядь,” said the young woman, surveying the damage on the machine. “We’re going to be here for some time, by the look of this mess.” Pulling out an assortment of tools from under her coat, she knelt beside the generator. “I’m Nastya, by the way,” she glanced up at him, something close to a smile in her silvery eyes.

Jet settled down beside her, his own set of tools in hand. “And I am Jet,” he said.

Around them, _Aurora_ ’s song echoed in the chamber like a heartbeat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jet and Nastya: exists  
> Me: these tired, well-meaning souls can have little a friendship, as a treat 
> 
> Leave a kudo if this pleases you, leave a comment if you feel the need to scream about gays in space at me, visit me at https://botanycrewmember.tumblr.com for the opportunity to yell at me even more directly. 
> 
> Next chapter: Vespa and Marius on the loose; what crimes will they commit?


	3. III. The High Priestess and the Jack of Clubs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The High Priestess: Juggling; multitasking   
> The Jack of Clubs: The enthusiastic pursuit of a new adventure   
> In which two doctors tend to each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: mentions of violence, phantom pains, symptoms of anxiety and panic attack

In Vespa’s hands was a knife. She turned it over and over, feeling the rough texture of the handle, the cool sharpness of the metal. In her head, she laid out one exit strategy after another, calculating the time and effort needed to incapacitate every Mechanism in the room. She had been doing so ever since she first set foot on this awful ship, and she did not plan on stopping.

That little man in the fancy coat and the stupid mono-goggle would be the easiest to take down; Vespa had seen how he practically ran into the Thief’s blade. Even now, standing beside the door, flexing the fingers in his right hand, he looked more like a nervous schoolboy than a guardsman. When things turn nasty—when, not if—Von Raum would be the least of Vespa’s worries.

D’Ville would be harder to engage. On one hand, he seemed utterly charmed by Buddy and, disgustingly enough, Vespa herself. After Buddy declared, in no uncertain terms, that Vespa was not to be disturbed, D’Ville had dutifully refrained from approaching Vespa and devoted his time to staring at Buddy all starstruck as she filled him in on (most of) their adventures so far. On the other hand, he was far too eager to be shot, stabbed, punched, or hurt in every way imaginable. If she wanted to prolong his regeneration process, she needed something more destructive than the knives she had. The twin blasters currently holstered under Buddy’s dress should be capable of demolishing his skull, given enough time and the element of surprise.

O’Reilly, the one smoking in the corner of the common room, was on the top of Vespa’s list of concerns. Their nonchalance towards everything around them convinced Vespa that they either were just incredibly good at bluffing or had something extremely lethal hidden up their sleeves. She didn’t want to take on O’Reilly without enough intel on them, but she couldn’t risk leaving them unaccounted for when she and Buddy worked on D’Ville and Von Raum.

And then there was the problem of escaping this _ship_ after they escape this _room_. Vespa had memorized the route to the hanger where the _Carte Blanche_ was parked; at full sprint, she and Buddy could get to their ship in under 5 minutes and meet up with Siquliak, who should still be there doing maintenance work. But then they would still be missing the _other_ three people. Vespa groaned inwardly as she thought about the trio of new recruits: the Hacker had practically attached herself to the winged woman, babbling about wanting to see her lab; Steel left some time after that, claiming that he needed to stretch his legs; as for the Thief… Vespa couldn’t remember when he left. She only knew that when she thought about checking on the Thief, he had been gone, leaving her to glare at the spot where she last saw him, expecting to hear his voice taunting her in her head.

“You know, _not_ being able to see things is a major failing for a medical professional, Ms. Ilkay.” Speak of the goddam devil, lounging in a chair next to hers and giving her a poisonous smirk. “Some might say _career-ending_ , even.”

Vespa closed her eyes and gripped her knife hard enough to make her muscles ache. Then she let out a breath and opened her eyes.

The chair next to hers was empty, as it had been all along.

Vespa felt like curling into herself and screaming until her throat bled, but she couldn’t afford to lose what was left of her vision and hearing if she wanted to figure a way to get her family off of this ship.

A few feet away, Buddy was chuckling, her chin propped against one hand as D’Ville regaled her with his crew’s misadventures. Her eye caught Vespa’s, and Buddy smiled, a tiny, private thing which filled Vespa’s chest with sunlight. Vespa could take down an entire army, with Buddy smiling at her like that.

Vespa willed herself to smile back, before she went back to work.

She needed to figure out a way to alert their three stray members when the situation went bad without tipping off any of the Mechanisms. She could trust (ha) Steel and the Thief to react discreetly to an emergency text, but there was absolutely no telling if the Hacker could keep herself together in a situation like that, and if there was one thing Vespa hated more than arguing with Steel about the Thief, it was arguing with Steel about the _Hacker_.

She ran a new scenario in her head, this time accounting for the event that they needed to collect the Hacker once the five of them regrouped. Siquliak would be able to track her down with her comms, and they would send the Thief and Steel to get the Hacker. Best case scenario: they succeed in retrieving the Hacker; worst case scenario: they don’t make it and die horribly, which meant that Buddy would have to get a new hacker, a new thief, and a new whatever-Steel-was-supposed-to-be, but wasn’t the whole damn solar system already crawling with—

“Excuse me, Dr. Ilkay?” Somewhere on her right, a hand was reaching towards her, and it was too close too quick no no no—

Vespa didn’t remember moving, but now the knife in her hand had stabbed through Von Raum’s right sleeve and pinned it to the table, missing his arm by a hair’s width. Her other hand was closed around his throat, hard enough to make his face flush and his eyes full of panic.

“I come in peace!” He gasped, tugging ineffectually at her hand.

Vespa felt as if there was a hand crushing her windpipe too. Out of the corners of her eyes, she saw everyone in the room staring at her: there was shock and worry on Buddy’s face; D’Ville looked thoroughly and savagely entertained; O’Reilly simply took another drag of their cigarette as if nothing of note had happened. Inside her head, voices jeered and mocked and taunted her for ruining everything, for angering their psycho hosts, and now they were all going to die and it would be all because of her useless her crazy her—

No.

Vespa forced herself to loosen her grip on Von Raum’s throat and inhaled deeply through her teeth. “What. Do. You. Want.” She growled.

“I, um.” His eyes darted between the knife that pinned his coat to the table and her hand, which was still wrapped around his throat despite the lessened pressure. “I came to ask for a favor? I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m real sorry about that.”

“Vespa?” Buddy’s tone was steady and measured, the kind of voice that could be deployed to diffuse a bomb. “Everything alright, darling?”

Vespa was not alright; she felt as if her lungs wouldn’t fill and her heart would burst out of her chest and her skin would snap from the roiling emotions within her. But she took another deep breath and let go of Von Raum’s neck. “I’m fine, Buddy,” she called, flinching at how ragged her voice sounded. “He just spooked me, is all.”

Buddy nodded, tension easing from her shoulders as she sat down. D’Ville, however, had something more to say.

“What the fuck were you doing, Marius?” He snapped. “I thought I told you not to bother our guests!”

“I just have something to ask Dr. Ilkay!” Von Raum shot back, rubbing his neck.

“Oh yeah? Like what?” D’Ville narrowed his eyes, his eyeliner making him look like a suspicious raccoon.

“Doctor stuff,” Von Raum crossed his arms, something smug crossing his face. “Not like you would understand.”

“No, I don’t, and I don’t plan to, nor do I care.” D’Ville sat down, acid dripping from each word he uttered. “Please feel free to stab him to death if he’s bothering you,” he called out to Vespa. “It would be a public service, really.”

Vespa stared at him, hard, until he seemed to shrink under her gaze and went back to talking to Buddy, then she turned to Von Raum, who started as if he had been shot.

“What was that favor you need from me?” She demanded.

“Um, are you sure you don’t want me to, you know, scram?” He asked, making a walking motion with his left hand, as his right was still trapped along with his sleeve by her knife. “I seemed to have approached you at a bad time…”

“You said it’s ‘doctor stuff,’” Vespa cut him off. “I am a doctor. So out with it.”

“Oh,” Von Raum blinked. “Oh, alright! Let me just…” He moved to shrug off his coat, but then he stopped, his gaze flickering between Vespa and the knife keeping his coat and arm hostage.

“Ugh,” Vespa rolled her eyes and pulled the knife away. She was vaguely disappointed when Von Raum’s arm didn’t lurch back and hit him in the face.

“Much obliged,” Von Raum took off his coat, and then had the audacity to _smile_ at her. She kept the knife in her hand as he sat down opposite her.

“It’s my arm that I need your help with,” he explained, rolling up his right sleeve. “Or, my mechanism, actually.”

“Don’t you think you should be looking for a mechanic—” Vespa began, but then Von Raum _opened_ his right arm, and what Vespa had to say died on her lips.

What should have been the skin on his right forearm had swung back like a door on its hinges, revealing an internal structure of brass bones, interconnected by wires. When his fingers moved, Vespa could see the wires moving, mimicking the movement of muscles and tendons.

Vespa had seen her fair share of prosthetics, but none of them were like this. There were no signs of any electronics or wiring; the whole forearm seemed to be constructed out of mechanical parts imitating the anatomy of a human forearm. It reminded Vespa of a mechanical person she had seen years ago. It was after a job with Buddy; the two of them were strolling through a marketplace, hand in hand and drunk on the thrill of success, then Buddy pointed out one of the stalls to Vespa. The vendor in there was selling ancient Earth artifacts, most of them antique robots. Sensing the two women’s curiosity, the vendor brought out something he referred to as an “automaton,” a mechanical doll that ran entirely on the energy stored in its gears instead of electricity. As the vendor demonstrated how the automaton could complete a sketch after being wound up, Vespa was struck by the smooth, expressionless face of the automaton, which formed a sharp contrast with the whirling gears inside its body.

Von Raum, however, bore no resemblance to the automaton’s stoicism. As of now, he was staring at Vespa with open expectation and pride, as if waiting for her to start swooning over the mechanical marvel that was his arm.

Vespa sat back. “Are you like this all over or is this the whole of it?” She asked, flatly.

Von Raum’s face fell a bit. “Just up to the Olecranon fossa,” he grumbled.

“And what seems to be the problem?”

“See here?” He pulled out a thin, metallic contraption from his coat pocket and pointed its tip at where the extensor indicis proprius was usually located in a human’s arm. Tracing the wire serving as the muscle in question, Vespa saw what the problem was: the wire was torn just above the wrist, rendering the index finger immobile.

“It’s been like this for a while now,” he explained. “I don’t remember how it happened, but after I noticed I’ve been trying to put it back together, but it turns out that an operation like that is really more of a two-hand job.”

“Why not get one of your crew to do it for you?” Vespa asked, snatching the tool in Von Raum’s hand and poking at the wires, trying to determine how to approach the “injury”.

“None of them are really medical professionals,” he admitted. “Well, we _think_ that Brian might have been a one point, but now he’s very touchy about that. Also, the others don’t want anything to do with stuff about doctors. It’s because of the person who gave them their mechanisms.”

“Someone _made_ you people _on purpose_?” Vespa looked up in horror.

“Not all of us; Raph and I joined the crew later on; the Toy Soldier was never alive to begin with. Jonny, Nastya, Ashes, Ivy, Brian, and Tim were mechanized by this vampire doctor called Dr. Carmilla, but they threw her out of an airlock a long time ago. She sounded like a real nasty piece of work, though. Even the _Aurora_ was glad to see her go.”

Vespa found her brain aching as it struggled to comprehend what she just heard, so she decided to not even try. “What do you want me to do with this?” She gestured at the torn wire with the metallic thing in her hand, which seemed increasingly and suspiciously similar to a metal chicken leg.

“Oh, just touch two ends of the wire together, and they will figure it out on their own!” Von Raum said, brightly.

“What.” Vespa stared at him.

“It’s, um, it’s a mechanism thing,” he shrugged, helplessly. “I would have done it on my own if I could, but it’s too delicate to do with one hand, so when I heard Jonny say you are a doctor, I…” he looked down, suddenly looking bashful. “I wanted to see how a real doctor would deal with this.”

There was a smidge of warmth in Vespa’s chest, and she tried desperately to stamp it out. _Of course_ he would say something like this to get her to help him; _of course_ he would try to appeal to her pride. Nevertheless, after all the insinuations that she had lost her touch, all those whispers about her going off the deep end, all the times she believed them to be true… it felt good to be called a doctor again.

She coughed to get rid of the tightness in her throat. “You got anything I could operate with? Because there’s no way I can work with… whatever this is.” She handed the metal thing back to Von Raum, whose brows furrowed at it.

“I don’t really know,” he admitted. “I won it from the Toy Soldier over chess one time and forgot to ask what it was. As for tools…” He reached into his discarded coat and retrieved a leather bag, opening and laying it out on the table. Inside were an array of surgical equipment: scalpels, forceps, clamps, retractors, etc. All of them were polished and gleaming, sitting in their respective compartments.

Vespa felt herself gawking and pulled herself back together. Selecting the instruments she needed, she asked, “Do you have any pain receptor in this arm?”

He shook his head. “Nope, just going to feel a bit tingly.”

So, Vespa went to work. As she worked on parting the wires, she could feel Von Raum watching her. It felt different from how she was used to being watched these days; Von Raum was… observing, documenting. There was a sort of eagerness in the way he hovered over her, and Vespa was surprised to find that she didn’t mind as much as she expected.

Eventually the quiet stretched on for too long, and she did not intend on chatting with invisible assholes while in surgery. “If you said your crew hates doctors, where did all these tools come from?” She said. “They look pretty well cared for.”

He sounded halfway between proud and embarrassed when he answered, “They are mine. Souvenirs from my days in medical school, actually.”

“You went to med school?” Vespa glanced up. “I’m surprised your crew hasn’t dumped you out of an airlock.”

There was something mischievous in Von Raum’s voice as he continued. “I told them I’m not technically a doctor since I never graduated nor received my degree and license.”

“How am I not surprised?” Vespa grunted as she navigated her way around a cluster of wires. “What was it? Malpractice? You tried to assemble a human from body parts?”

To her surprise, he giggled at that, straining himself to not jostle the arm under her administration.

“I wished it were that epic, but no. I had to run because of this.” He tapped his mechanical arm. “I was cleaning up in the dissection lab when something next door went _kaboom_. I woke up in the medical ward with a whole new arm and no idea how it got onto me. I was up and running a few hours after I woke up, and by running, I mean literally _running for my life_. Because it turned out that the school had declared me legally dead so that they can put their newly acquired research specimen under a microscope and see what makes me tick.”

Vespa said nothing. She focused on the movement of her hands and tried to ignore the flashes of a debtor’s tag in her mind.

“I ran for a long, long time.” Von Raum continued. “I think I only noticed the whole immortality deal after I got shot 13 times by one of those bounty hunters. I hid on an asteroid in the Andromeda system for a few decades, waiting for things to cool down. But I got distracted trying to work out how my arm worked, and by the time I remembered to go back and check, I found that I had outlived everyone who’d been handing out my wanted posters by accident.” There was no bitterness in his voice, just a faint, weathered hint of humor.

“And then?” Vespa had a clear visual of the wire’s two ends now. She told herself that she needed his voice to help her drown out any intrusion that might come from her head.

“Tried med school a few more times, actually.” He chuckled. “Believe it or not, I still really wanted to get that degree. But I seemed to always attract the kind of attention that got me turned into a lab rat, though never literally.”

He paused and pondered that, briefly, as if he was genuinely disappointed that he had never been turned into a rodent. He recovered quickly, though.

“Eventually, I met Raph in one of the schools’ lab—she was trying to break into it while I was breaking out. We decided to search for more people like us, and that landed us here.”

“Hmmm.” Vespa commented. With each end of the wire held in a pair of tweezers, she touched them together. Beneath her eyes, the two ends twitched and wrapped themselves around each other, merging into one—just as Von Raum said. “I’m done. You can try moving that finger now,” she said.

Von Raum bent his right index finger experimentally. A wide, pleased smile blossomed on his face when the finger curled and uncurled without hinderance. “A thousand thanks, Dr. Ilkay,” he stood and bowed, theatrically.

“Yeah, whatever,” Vespa muttered as she put the tools back into their leather bag. “Just try not to break it again. If everything goes well, I won’t ever be here to fix it again.”

She had expected him to leave once she had packed away all his tools. But he stayed where he was, fidgeting with the bag, looking as if he had something more to say. “What,” she prompted.

“Dr. Ilkay, um,” he dithered, scratching his head and nearly dislodging his mono-goggle. “I know this really wasn’t my place to say but—”

“Just spit it out already, Von Raum.” Vespa sat back in her chair and crossed her arms.

“Okay,” he took a deep breath. “I sometime feel like I could still sense my real arm; the one I lost, I mean.”

Vespa blinked. That went… differently than what she expected.

“Sometimes, when I’m playing the violin or just doing stuff, I thought I could feel it, real flesh and blood and bone, all thrumming where it should be metal and wires. And that’s really scary sometimes. And I know that all of us—the Mechanisms—feel like that sometimes. I know that it scares the others just as badly as it does me, but they won’t admit it.” He was whispering, his voice low but urgent. “Most of the time they just shoot things or set fire to things or blow things up when they feel the lost parts of themselves acting up, but really they’re just afraid, you know?”

“So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that… I think you’re real brave to not let your ghosts be an excuse to hurt people,” he was blushing now, his gaze barely staying on her for more than a second. “And I think you are a fantastic doctor, regardless of what other people might say.”

There was a lump in Vespa’s throat, and she struggled to swallow it. “I don’t think you have much of a sample size of doctors, Von Raum,” she managed to say without her voice wobbling (too much).

“But I’ve met other doctors!” He protested. “There was Dr. Pilchard, for starters.”

“Who the hell is Dr. Pilchard?”

There was a glint in Von Raum’s eyes as he spoke. “Would you like me to _tell_ you?” His hands were heading towards a case on the floor, and Vespa knew, instantly and viscerally, what he was going to do.

“If you so much as _touch_ that violin,” she said, “I will knife you so hard in the forehead that your thoughts will taste like metal for the next entire month.”

“Alright, then.” He pouted. “Can I at least tell you in the boring way?”

Vespa sighed. Why the hell not? She could use the sound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Vespa Ilkay with all of my gay little heart and I think Marius deserves to wield the brain cell for a change.   
> Next up: Rita has the time of her life blowing stuff up with Raphaella; the Toy Soldier brings questionable tea.


	4. IV. The Magician, the Queen of Spades, and the Jack of Diamonds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Magician: Skill, transformation  
> The Queen of Spades: Strategy, intelligence, ambition  
> The Jack of Diamonds: Fascination, wonder, scholarship  
> In which Rita weaponizes a drone, Raphaella gains a Lab Partner, and the Toy Soldier makes questionable tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: description of Bad Food; threats of violence towards one Jonny D'Ville, who by all odds might appreciate them

Rita was making a noise. It was a shrill, high-pitched noise that was almost identical to the sound of those old-style kettles she had seen in period dramas. Or maybe it was bats. Anyway, it was the kind of noise that would make Mistah Steel cringe full-bodily and yell at her to stop, only Rita could not stop making it because if she did she was going to EXPLODE.

Ms. Raphaella’s lab looked like someone took every laboratory in those science-y streams and smashed them all together. There were blueprints and sketches of gigantic machines strewn across the tables; liquids of every imaginable colors were bubbling in tubes and beakers; there were workshop tables bristling with saws, sanders, and welding tools; chambers with observation windows lined the far wall of the lab, the glass speckled with the remains of whatever had exploded in those rooms. Rita felt like she had been stabbed in the chest with a candy cane; that would explain why her knees were going weak while her heart was doing the little jig it did when she had five whole bags of chocolate sandworms.

“Are you alright, Rita?” Ms. Raphaella’s bright voice broke through the ecstatic haze in Rita’s head. “We’ve been standing at the door for a minute now, and you haven’t moved yet.”

Rita opened her mouth and closed it hastily when her squeal erupted from her throat. “I’m fine, Ms. Raphaella,” she managed, once she convinced her vocal cord to translate all the feelings in her chest into human language. “It’s just that—I’ve never seen a lab like your ‘n everything looks so _amazing_ ‘n I think I’m going to pass out because I’m so EXCITED!” She finished in one breath, and then refilled her lungs to add, “Also I think your wings are very pretty, ‘specially with those retractable razors in ‘em.”

Ms. Raphaella smiled. “Well, don’t pass out right now, Rita, because we’ve got important work to do.” She strode into the lab and nudged Rita along with one wing (with the razors retracted, of course).

The science officer moved between the workbenches like a long-legged water-fowl, maneuvering her massive wings effortlessly around the towers of papers and equipment, while Rita had to jog a bit to catch up, which was not ideal for her because a) Rita did _not_ appreciate running under any circumstances and b) she was moving past too many fascinating things at too fast a pace!

“Ms. Raphaella!” She called out, when they walked (in Rita’s case, zoomed) past a bulky piece of machinery that looked like a car engine and a toaster had torrid affair. “Is that a hyper-drive engine?”

“Oh, that’s just a prototype I’m working on for a single-person time-travel vehicle. Still need to work out how to bully the whole ‘law of conservation of matter’ when the matter is ninth of what we’re used to dealing with.” The science officer replied, pinning her long hair into a bun as she walked.

“Woah,” Rita made a mental note to take some pictures of that thing later. “And what about that?” She pointed at a tall glass cylinder, in which something dark and serpentine was floating, coiled up and immobile; Rita felt as if waves of negative energy were rippling out of that creature.

“Captured it near Alpha Centauri; it appears to be sentient, since it was sobbing uncontrollably when we first found it, but now all it does is sleep.” Ms. Raphaella wrinkled her nose at it. “Useless.”

“Well, I think it’s nice that you’re letting it nap all safe and soundly,” Rita offered. “Oh! What about that?” She pointed at a mound of something white and green and fuzzy festering in a petri dish. “Is that a genetic experiment?

Ms. Raphaella pulled out a pair of rubber gloves from her lab coat and picked up the object in question with a disgusted scowl.

“This,” she said, “is the remains of our first mate’s sandwich, currently more fungal than sandwich, really. I thought I told Jonny to do his own waste disposal three centuries ago…” She turned on an incinerator built into the workbench and tossed the offending thing in along with the gloves, walking away without looking at the resulting smoke.

Rita felt a profound, bone-deep regret that she hadn’t been filming this conversation; that moment could have made a fantastic looping image.

“Anyway,” Ms. Raphaella once again used one of her wings to scoop Rita along with her (which made Rita feel like a little duckling which was so much fun), “I didn’t invite you to my lab just for a guided tour—though having someone here who also appreciates science is nice—I brought you here because I’m working on a project of the highest importance, and I need your expertise to assist me.”

Rita could feel another bout of supersonic squealing rising from the pit of her stomach, but she smooshed it with a metaphorical pillow and put on her best professional assistant voice. “You can count on me, Ms. Raphaella! Your Lab Partner Rita is here to assist you! What are we working on today, partner?”

Ms. Raphaella stopped in front of a workbench piled high with mechanical parts and scattered papers. “We are going to enforce some justice on this ship, Rita,” she announced, with a bright and terrible gleam in her eyes. “With the power of science.”

Rita gasped. “Oh! Like that time I turned Dark Matter’s nasty transforming robot into three smaller robots of justice so Mistah Steel ‘n Mistah Ransom ‘n I can use ‘em to sneak into this top-secret prison for naughty programs and steal the Book?” She looked up hopefully at the science officer.

Ms. Raphaella blinked. “I’m not going to pretend I understood most of what you just said, but what matters is that you already have experience! Adding to that, you have shown an affinity for both the technology of your era and ours, which makes you the perfect candidate to advise me on my project.” One of her wings reached out and hooked a stepping stool towards Rita so that she could see what sat on the table.

“This is still a work in progress and there’s—” Ms. Raphaella began, but Rita had thrown all attempts to stay calm to the proverbial wind and dived toward the machine before her.

“It’s so cute!” She squealed, picking up the thing up and turning it over in her hands like it was a darling little pug. “It’s like a little tank with all the tracks ‘n turret ‘n everything!”

“And it can also do this,” Ms. Raphaella plucked the miniature tank from Rita’s hands and did something complicated with its gun, which retracted and was replaced by a pair of thin, metallic limbs with claw-like fixtures at the end. The science officer put the tank on the table, where it immediately rolled forward, its wheels squeaking as it went, to pick up a screwdriver and place it in a compartment in its belly. Then it replaced its claws with the turret and fired a shot, narrowly missing its creator and Rita, causing a small explosion on a workbench behind them. Several fire-extinguishers on wheels rolled out and began to put out the fires.

“That was… a very impressive demonstration, Ms. R,” said Rita, peeking out from under Ms. Raphaella’s wings, where she had taken shelter when she saw the cannonball coming.

“It would have been, if I had actually _told_ it to shoot after it retrieved the target.” Ms. Raphaella frowned at the little tank. “There’s also the fact that it was making too much noise while moving, which is unacceptable for a machine that is designed to be stealthy…”

“Well, what do you plan on having it do, Ms. Raphaella?” Rita piped up. “If we know the thing it’s supposed to do, we’ll know how to make it do the thing better!”

“Remember what I told you about exacting justice, Rita?” Raphaella asked. When Rita nodded, she continued, “You see, our _esteemed_ first mate has been leaving his personal belongs everywhere, contaminating my workplace and messing up my storage system.” She waved a hand at the stacks of blueprints and the precarious piles of machine parts; Rita nodded sympathetically.

“So, in order to encourage him to keep his stuff where they belong, I’m going to use this device to acquire his precious belts and keep them hostage until he comes and cleans up the mess he made in my lab.”

“Makes sense,” Rita remarked. “Mistah Steel was always leaving his case files all over the office and then complaining to me when he couldn’t find them ‘n I always told him that if he didn’t like the way I organized his things he could try ‘n do it on his own and _anyway_ —” Rita pulled herself together when she realized that she was going down a long, _long_ tangent. “We just need to make this bot super quiet right?”

“That’s the idea, yes,” Ms. Raphaella replied.

“Hmmm,” Rita stared at Squeaky—which was what she decided to call it until it stopped squeaking. She looked at the tracks and the wheels. She looked at the surface of the workbench. She found herself wishing that she had her trusty snacks, but her snacks were on the Carte Blanche, and the last time she had a proper quality time with them was when she was watching a stream with Mistah Jet, after she and Mistah Steel and Mistah Ransom stole the Book—

“Oh! Oh!” She bounced, almost falling off the stool had Ms. Raphaella didn’t use her wings to nudge her upright again. “Aww thanks, Ms. R but also I know how to fix the problem!”

“How?” Ms. Raphaella demanded.

“Squeaky—that’s how I’m calling your bot now—is too noisy when it is rolling around because it has tracks ‘n there’s friction ‘n stuff, right?”

“Yes?”

“So! If Squeaky ain’t got wheels…” Rita picked Squeaky up and moved it above the workbench, hoping that her audience would understand her insinuation.

“Are you suggesting that we modify the machine so that it is anti-gravity, eliminating the friction problem entirely?” Ms. Raphaella’s face brightened.

“Yeah! Just like my Fat Brain—my robot, not my actual fat brain—we can cover Squeaky in directional gravity plates so it can hover! That way it’s gonna be super easy for Squeaky to go anywhere, even if the belts you want are on the top shelf!”

“Rita, you are simply fantastic.” Ms. Raphaella flashed Rita a smile so brilliant it looked like a supernova. Rita wondered, dazed, if people thought angels had halos because angels all had a smile like Ms. Raphaella’s. “I don’t seem to have any directional gravity plates here, but I’m sure I can just make some…” She began to move away, but Rita tugged on her left wing and stopped her.

“Uh, Ms. Raphaella?” Rita fidgeted with her comms. “D’ya think I can, um, poke around in Squeaky’s program a bit? I ain’t gonna change a lot of stuff! I just wanna fix that thing where it goes all shoot-y after it takes the stuff it’s after and I also wanna add some cool maneuvers like the things they do in streams so that Mistah First Mate Jonny ain’t gonna get Squeaky that easily—”

“Calm down, Rita,” Ms. Raphaella said. She opened Squeaky up and removed its chip, tossing it to Rita. “I now authorize you to make whatever alteration to the machine’s program.” She grinned. “Go wild.”

“Yes ma’am!” Rita saluted, her mind already teeming with every action streams she had ever watched.

Some time into her program writing, Rita was jolted out of her concentration by a chipper voice: “Tally Ho, My Dear!”

Scrambling into a more dignified sitting position on the workbench (she got tired standing on the stepping stool), Rita took a better look at the new arrival.

The wooden person looked a bit like the doll Rita had once seen in a stream called the Walnut Breaker or the Seed Cracker, with its polished wooden surface, its painted moustache, and its wide, unwavering smile. Its uniform was so pristine that it looked like a toy that had just been lifted out of its box.

Rita found it very dashing indeed.

“Hi, I’m Rita!” She declared. “I’m here to be Ms. Raphaella’s Lab Partner!”

“And I’m The Toy Soldier, At Your Service!” It gave a salute. “Would You Care For A Nice Cuppa?” It pushed forward a tray, upon it sat a teapot, a bowl of white cubes, a creamer with white liquid in it, and three cups of steaming brown liquid.

“Aww, that’s so nice of you!” Rita cooed. “I’ll have this if you don’t mind…” Her hand reached towards the teacup with pink flower prints.

“ _Stop_.” Ms. Raphaella strode towards them, her wings flaring out like an agitated bird of prey. “Don’t touch that, Rita.”

“But Ms. Raphaella, it’s just tea!” Rita protested.

“That’s exactly the problem,” Ms. Raphaella sighed. “It’s not tea. All of us have fallen for this at some point.”

“That,” she pointed at the creamer, “is paint.”

“Correct!” The Toy Soldier trilled while Rita began to scoot away.

Ms. Raphaella pointed at the contents of the sugar bowl, “And that is ricin.”

“Also Correct!” The Toy Soldier cheered.

Ms. Raphaella raised a teacup and stared at it. “TS,” she said, “what is in this?”

“It’s A Surprise!” The Toy Soldier’s painted glass eyes remained shiny and amiable. “I Just Want To Meet Our New Friend Rita!”

Ms. Raphaella tore up a piece of paper nearby and dipped it into the cup. The paper burst into flames and crumbled into the liquid. Rita yelped.

“TS, Rita would _die_ if she drank this,” Ms. Raphaella told the Toy Soldier.

“And?” The Toy Soldier cocked its head to one side, somehow looking puzzled despite its unchanging expression.

“She’s not like us, TS. She can’t come back if she died.”

The Toy Soldier appeared to be processing this information. It went rigid for a while, and the it said, “Oh.”

“Go to the kitchen and make real tea,” Ms. Raphaella commanded. “And I mean REAL TEA. Ask Ashes if you can’t find the teabags.”

“I Aye, Old Chap!” The Toy Soldier saluted, before picking up its tea set and marching away.

“Sorry for that intrusion,” Ms. Raphaella said, after the wooden figure’s footsteps had faded. “It has been playing pretend its entire existence, and there are concepts it couldn’t fully comprehend, the cessation of existence being chief among them.”

“What is it, exactly? Rita asked. “Is it an AI or bot? We’ve got some really advanced bots back on Mars, but I’ve never seen anything like the Toy Soldier.”

“None of us really knows what it is supposed to be, just that it seemed to enjoy getting involved in things and pretending to be an actual person,” Ms. Raphaella shrugged. “Have you finished the programming?”

“Almost! Just gotta put in the finishing touches aaaaand… we’re done!” Rita handed over the chip. “Are we gonna do the test flight, Ms. Raphaella?”

“What kind of scientists are we if we don’t?” There was a twinkle in the science officer’s eyes as she inserted the chip into the newly refurbished drone. The drone, covered in a layer of directional gravity plating, rose into the air like a miniature airship with a cannon mounted on it. It made almost no sound as Ms. Raphaella directed it through a series of basic maneuvers: up and down, left and right, forwards and backwards.

Rita wondered if this was what it felt like to watch your baby take their first step.

Then it was time for the more advanced, or, in Rita’s opinion, the more awesome maneuvers. On her command, the drone sped through the air, doing loop-de-loops or zigzagging, or dropping suddenly like a pigeon dodging an eagle’s attack. She was particularly pleased by one maneuver where the drone would draw the figure eight in the air in lazy curves. She had named it “Waltz of the Bumblebee,” much to Ms. Raphaella’s amusement.

“What exactly is the purpose of this move?” Ms. Raphaella asked, watching from outside the test chamber.

“Well, y’know how bumblebees are these big meanies with nasty stingers?”

“I’m pretty sure those are wasps.”

“Eh, toe-may-toes, toe-mah-toes,” Rita shrugged. “Anyway, once our drone finishes drawing, it would do what bumblebees do best and… pew pew!”

Inside the test chamber, the drone fired two shots from its cannon, redecorating the opposite wall in huge patches of scorch marks.

“Very impressive. What do you want to call it?” Ms. Raphaella asked, when they let the drone out of the chamber and guided it to land on the workbench.

Rita stared at her, her eyes enormous. “You’re letting me name it?”

“Most of my own inventions just have numbers; I thought that since this is a collaborated effort, it’s only appropriate that you decide what to call it.”

“You’re too kind to me, Ms. Raphaella!” Rita tackle-hugged the science officer, who stumbled a bit under the momentum, before gingerly returning the gesture. Rita had a sneaking suspicion that she might not be too familiar with hugs. Releasing the shaken-looking Ms. Raphaella, Rita picked up the drone and gazed at it intently.

“I’m gonna call you…” she raked her mind for awesome names, until the perfect one leapt at her, and she seized it with a victorious “aha!”

“The Hurricane Rita!” She announced. “I haven’t actually seen a hurricane anywhere on Mars but I saw a few streams where there are hurricanes ‘n they are all named after ladies ‘n they are super powerful ‘n they can pick up cars ‘n slam ‘em into other cars—”

“Very well,” Raphaella conceded. “I will have to do some minor recalibration on the Hurricane Rita, but I’m sure we can deploy it by the end of the day.” She carried the drone to another workbench.

“Ok, Ms. R,” Rita began to scramble off of her perch, but a flash of red at the corner of her eyes caught her attention.

“Hello!” Said the Toy Soldier. “I Return With Real Tea!”

“Uh, are you sure?” Rita eyed the tray in its hands with apprehension.

“Positive!” The Toy Soldier replied. “Feel Free To Sample It!”

Rita decided to forgo the white cubes entirely. She sniffed at the white liquid in the creamer; it smelled like milk.

“I Took The Carton Of Milk Tim Was Storing For The Kittens,” the Toy Soldier declared. “As Well As The Sugar Cubes.”

Which left the tea. Rita took one of the scrap papers and dripped a bit of the brown liquid on it. It didn’t catch fire; she could smell a rich, fruity smell wafting from the cup.

“Just so we’re clear, Mx. The Toy Soldier,” she said, trying to channel Mistah Steel’s best growl, “if I died drinking this tea, you are gonna be in big trouble. Mistah Steel ain’t gonna take too kindly if his ex-secretary slash best friend is hurt, y’know?”

“Perfectly!”

“Ok then,” Rita took the tiniest sip. Then she took a much bigger sip. “Oh wow this is really good! What’s in it? It tastes like berries!”

“It’s Four Red Fruits Tea!” The Toy Soldier supplied. “Ashes Makes This Tea For Nastya When She Gets Too Cold, And That’s How I Found Where The Real Tea Is.”

“Well, thanks a bunch, Mx. The Toy Soldier,” Rita took a proper sip of her tea, feeling warmth rushing all over her. “By the way, you have a real pretty voice!”

“Thanks! I Stole It From An Angel!”

“Oh.” Rita didn’t know how to respond to that.

They sat in silence for a while, Rita sipping her tea and the Toy Soldier… just being there, actually. Until it spoke up again.

“Do You Know Who You Remind Me Off? The Lady Red Hood!” It chirped.

“Who is that? It sounds like a name from a fairytale.” Rita scooted closer to the Toy Soldier. “Is she a beautiful princess?”

“Oh! She Is A Genius Hacker Who Helped The Rebels Defeat The Tyrannical King Cole.” The wooden doll explained. “She Was Good With Coding And Hacking Just Like You.”

Rita felt heat rising to her cheeks and grinned into her cup. “You really are a nice ‘ole doll, aren’t you?” She nudged the Toy Soldier.

“Why, I Pretend To Be,” it replied.

“But if all you pretend to do is being nice, and all you ever do is pretend, then doesn’t that make you nice in the end?” She pointed out.

Despite having a face that was painted on, the Toy Soldier looked as if it was having an existential crisis. It was, however, cut short by the return of Ms. Raphaella, who approached them with a conspiring smile.

“I’ve recalibrated the Hurricane Rita,” she said, “but then I had an idea.”

“What is it?” Rita demanded. “Tell me!”

Ms. Raphaella leaned closer. “Can you program it to attack a person every time they are playing the harmonica?”

Rita hesitated. “I can, but… why? I thought the Hurricane Rita is supposed to just steal Mistah Jonny’s belts and defend itself, not to attack him actively.”

“Jonny Shoots Octokittens!” The Toy Soldier piped up.

“He does what to those poor kittens?” Rita exclaimed in horror.

“He does,” Ms. Raphaella concurred. “On a daily basis, in fact.”

Rita felt Righteous Fury rising in her chest. “Gimme that chip,” she commanded. “I’m gonna Write Some Programs.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ever since I listened to that part where Rita dissembles a robot in the dead of the night, pieces it into 3 smaller bots, and fires all three bots into the sky, I knew I had to let her and Raphaella meet and become Lab Partners. Also I think that the Toy Soldier deserves love and appreciation.  
> (Also, yes, That Character is now in the custody of the Mechanisms. I love his novel counterpart and have some Thoughts about him in his own universe, so he gets to hang out in the background while I play with the characters I adore.)  
> Next up: Juno Steel and the Case of the Fuzzy Animals, the Gunner with Great Hair, and the Immortal Librarian.


	5. V. The Star, the Queen of Diamonds, and the King of Diamonds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Star: Hope; healing  
> The Queen of Diamonds: Mastery (not control) over nature  
> The King of Diamonds: Happiness found in nature or spirituality  
> In which Juno pets fluffy animals, Ivy learns rabbit facts, and Tim is simply trying to write a song

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: usage of firearms, mentions of blood, an octokitten gets knocked out for about three seconds but she’s Fine

His name was Juno Steel, an ex-cop, a former private investigator, a current crime family member, and he was sure that he was being followed.

Juno didn’t trust the Mechanisms. No, scratch that; Juno didn’t _like_ the Mechanisms. There was something in their eyes, something ecstatic and ravenous that reminded him of the kind of people who watched Cecil Kanagawa’s shows and cheered when the cameras got splattered with blood. Juno could still hear the frenzied laughter of the man who called himself Gunpowder Tim echoing in his head; he remembered how it felt, watching the _Aurora_ ’s cannons shatter every gunship of that blockade while that laughter rang on and on, turning his blood into ice and making him shiver with rage.

That was why he was down in the bowels of the _Aurora_ , snooping around for any proof that the Mechanisms would turn on them. Despite what Jonny D’Ville had said about their hospitality, Juno was not about to play nice with a group of psychopaths who treated slaughter like _entertainment_ unless he knew exactly what they were planning.

His other hand, the one not hovering over his blaster, brushed against the outline of his comms in his coat pocket. Nureyev, being more proficient with tech, had taken to the upper half of the ship to find a server room and root through their data. Juno didn’t like the idea of leaving Nureyev alone to face whatever grisly things the Mechanisms had hidden on their ship, but if past experiences had taught him anything, it was that the master thief was fully capable of defending himself and, if their previous skirmish with the Mechanisms was any indication, slicing his way through a horde of crazy space pirates when push came to shove. Besides, Juno had that scuttling noise above him to worry about.

The noise had been following him for a few minutes now, always trailing behind him, moving and stopping in tendon with him. It sounded like the rustling of cloth against metal and the light thumps of multiple legs tapping on pipes, and it came from somewhere within the labyrinth of vents and pipes overhead. It also didn’t sound remotely like human, which did nothing to reassure him.

Could this be what the Mechanisms were planning? Letting the Aurinko’s think they were safe on the _Aurora_ while some ceiling-climbing monster hunt them for sport? The thought felt laughable the second it entered his mind; if the Mechanisms wanted sport, they would have just done the hunting themselves. But regardless of whether the Mechanisms were behind this, Juno was being followed by something with unknown intentions, and he intended to put a stop to it.

Up ahead, the corridor turned to the right, and there in the ceiling was a spot less crowded with pipes. Juno saw his opening.

As he rounded the corner, Juno quickened his pace and positioned himself below the clear spot of the ceiling. Two seconds later, _something_ zipped across the spot, and Juno drew his blaster and fired.

There was the telltale sound of a stunning blast hitting a body, and then the _something_ dropped to the floor with a thud.

With his blaster still raised, Juno approached the thing cautiously. It was about the size of a small housecat, covered in bronze-colored fur, with far more legs than a creature of that size had any right to have. But there was something familiar about the shape of its head…

As Juno crouched down before the creature to examine the creature, its’ eyes snapped open. 

“Ah!” He cried out as the creature lurched across the floor and jumped onto his left leg, fastening itself to him with its furry appendages. “Get off me!” He hopped around on his unoccupied leg, trying to shake off the creature, who only tightened its grip in retaliation.

After nearly a minute of what he thought probably looked like a clumsy, one-legged jig, Juno decided to switch tactic and pointed his blaster at the creature’s cat-like head. “Listen, pal,” he panted. “I’m not in a hugging mood, and you’re probably not in a ‘getting-shot-in-the-face’ kind of mood, so why don’t you be a good monster and let go of my leg?”

Now that the creature was less than two feet away from his face, Juno could see that the upper half of the creature looked almost identical to the cats on Mars, save for the fact that it had only two eyes, with strange, square pupils. The lower half of the creature’s body seemed like some bizarre combination of a cat and an octopus, splitting into eight fluffy tentacles, which held onto his left leg with surprising strength.

The creature seemed completely unperturbed by Juno’s threat. It sniffed the muzzle in front of its face, then its gaze shifted to meet Juno’s. And then it _slow-blinked_.

Without warning, the octopus-cat bonked its head against Juno’s left leg and began to purr, sending waves of vibration into his very bones as it nuzzled its cheeks into his pantleg.

Juno scrambled a bit to keep his grip on the blaster in the face of this unorthodox assault.

“Hey,” he said to the lump of fur currently making a noise like an ancient sanding machine wearing away his resolve, “you aren’t tricking me into letting my guard down so you can gobble me up later, are you?”

The little eldritch creature responded by purring even louder and burrowing its head into his shin.

Juno felt as if someone had swapped his heart with equal weight of spun sugar; it... wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. He put away his blaster and reached out to scratch the creature behind its ears. “Alright, you’re on probation now, little buddy,” he said, trying to keep his voice from wobbling.

Leaning into his touch, the octopus-cat loosened its hold on his leg and reached out two tentacles to wrap, tentatively, around Juno’s wrist, as if asking for permission.

Juno found a smile pulling at his lips. “Yeah, it’s okay. Welcome aboard, pal.” He allowed the creature to wrap the rest of its tentacles around his left arm and lifted it up, holding it closer to his chest like he was cuddling a cat—an eight-legged, octopus-eyed cat, who was busy coaxing his internal organs to resonate with its purring. He scratched its chin and watched its eyes went all squinty with contentment. “What kind of animal are you, anyway?”

“There you are. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” Said a voice behind Juno, sending him whirling around, the octopus-cat tucked against his chest with one hand and his blaster at the ready in the other.

The red-headed archivist, Ivy Alexandria, eyed the weapon inches away from her nose with vague interest. “You’ll have to turn the setting on that gun much higher if you want to actually kill me,” she remarked. “Otherwise my brain would just do a quick five-minute restart instead of a full shut-down.”

“What do you mean, you’ve been looking for me?” Juno demanded, deciding to ignore how she had just nonchalantly advised him on how to murder her. The little creature on his arm meowed, sounding concerned as it tapped his chin lightly with one tentacle/paw.

“What?” Ivy looked puzzled for a moment, then she sniffed. “No, I wasn’t looking for you; I was looking for _her_.” She reached past the blaster in her face and pointed at the bundle of fur nestled against Juno’s chest. “The newest litter was missing a kitten, and based on my studies on them, there was only a 0.5% chance of it bonding with a stranger onboard, yet here we are. Fascinating.” A look of curiosity sparkled in her eyes. “Have you been in contact with engine oil for the last forty-eight hours?”

“Of course not, the _Carte Blanche_ runs on nuclear energy.” Juno holstered the blaster for the second and (he hoped) the last time. “Why did you ask?”

“Because it’s the octokittens’ second favorite food apart from, well, real food. Speaking of which, you mind helping me carry these pellets to Storage Bay #3? It’s almost feeding time for the octokittens.” She gestured behind her, where two large sacks sat on the floor.

Juno was torn; on one hand, he _should_ continue his investigation after all this interruption, but on the other hand…

He looked down at the octokitten, who blinked its strange eyes at him and made a “brrrr” noise.

Well, the odds were stacked against him from the start, anyway.

“Lead the way,” he told ivy.

The octokitten was considerate enough to migrate from Juno’s arm to perch on his shoulder, which made carrying the sack of pellets much easier. As they walked, Ivy pelted him relentlessly with questions about Mars, or, as she put it, “the Mars of _his_ timeline.” It felt a bit like facing off against the Proctor again, only this time there were no deathtraps, and Juno was sure that the Proctor’s head didn’t make the noise of a computer going into overdrive whenever he gave a lengthy response.

“So, what you are saying is that there is a sub-species of rabbits on Mars that have adapted to living _exclusively_ in human-made structures, capable of understanding _human linguistic patterns_ , and participate regularly in _monetary transaction_.” She stared at him, her head again making that whirling noise like Rita’s computer when she had 50 tabs open at once.

“Yeah?” Juno shrugged. “Not sure about that ‘sub-species’ definition, though. These are the only rabbits we have on Mars.”

“Most interesting,” she muttered into the sack of pellet she was carrying. “Every species of animal-like creatures we’ve encountered in urban landscapes are mechanical instead of organic in nature. It might be worthwhile to investigate the factors that led to this phenomenon on this specific Mars…” Her gaze flickered towards him, “Are you particularly attached to you Mars at the moment? I might have to conduct some—”

“Yes.” Juno answered without a beat, thinking about Mick and Khan and Small Fry and every single lifeform on Mars who did _not_ deserve what the Mechanisms would bring. “And it’s not like you have to be there to study those rabbits; you can just read up all the papers on the Net. There’s tons of people who’ve written about them—what’s wrong, kitty?” He turned to the octokitten, who had suddenly gone still, head cocked to one side and ears perked up.

He wouldn’t even have noticed the sound had he not been looking at the octokitten, but as he strained his ears to figure out what had spooked her, he heard it too.

It was faint at first, barely audible over the hum of the Aurora’s engines, but as they walked on it became consistent enough for him to pin down: a soft voice, accompanied by the strumming of a guitar.

“Am I going crazy,” Juno said, “or is there someone _singing_?”

“That would be Tim,” Ivy rolled her eyes. “Most likely playing one of his songs to the octokittens even after I told him 9346 times that they don’t possess the faculties for musical criticism.”

Juno struggled to reconcile the gunner’s merciless laughter with the mellow voice he was hearing; it made his brain felt like turning itself inside-out.

As they approached the door to Storage Bay #3, the song grew loud enough for Juno to make out the lyrics:

_O my love, what madness can this be?_

_In your place a monster I do see_

_All this time, I've lived with your deceit_

_O my love, we know this cannot be_

The strumming of the guitar echoed across the hallway, each twang of the strings like the leaping of a candle’s flame, like one pulse reverberating in two joined hands.

Intellectually, Juno knew that he was standing in a hallway on the Aurora, that he could feel the engines rumbling beneath his feet, but for one brief, disorienting moment, it was as if he was back in that Martian tomb, watching the blood-soaked memories of Peter Nureyev and thinking _monster_. 

A fluffy paw landed on his cheek, jolting him back to reality. Looking up, Juno caught a glimpse of Ivy’s back disappearing into the doorway. The octokitten on his shoulder batted him again and meowed, sounding impatient.

“Alright, alright, Your Royal Fuzziness. I’m going.” Juno shook his head and followed Ivy into the storage bay.

It was hard to tell what the insides of Storage Bay #3 was supposed to look like, since about two thirds of every flat surface was covered in octokittens, hanging from the ceiling, sticking to walls, or oozing lazily across the floor, their heads turned towards the man sitting in their midst, singing and playing his guitar. At the sight of Ivy and her sack of pellets, however, the furry horde immediately abandoned their entertainment and swarmed towards the archivist, who upended the sack and regarded the subsequent feeding frenzy with the aloof amusement of a tyrant scattering coins into a crowd.

“What the hell, Ivy?” Gunpowder Tim exclaimed, accusingly. “I was in the middle of a composition! I needed my audience!” A few stray octokittens clambered over him in their haste to reach their meal, prompting him to cradle his guitar protectively to his chest.

“Your ‘audience’ have yet to demonstrate the higher brain functions required to provide constructive criticism,” Ivy retorted. “And I brought back the missing one, so you’re very welcome.”

“You did?” Tim brightened up. His gaze zeroed in on the octokitten, before pulling back a little to include Juno. “Along with our new sharpshooter friend, I see. Great aim, by the way,” he flashed Juno a bayonet-sharp grin. “Would love to see more of that on a shooting range someday.”

“Well, unless you plan to try anything with that gun of yours, I think I’m done with today’s demonstration.” Juno looked meaningfully at the pistol tucked into Tim’s belt.

Tim followed his gaze and laughed. “Don’t worry about that. Ivy’s banned gunfights around the kittens.”

“I don’t want them to come rubbing themselves against my bookshelves while covered in the remains of their dead companions,” Ivy pointed out, sitting cross-legged amidst the feeding horde, a book propped up on two dozing octokittens in her lap. “You know how they use my shelves as scratching posts.”

“True,” Tim nodded, sagely. He stood up and held out his arms towards the octokitten on Juno’s shoulder. “Anyway, it’s time for our prodigal kitten to come home.”

Juno would be lying if he said he didn’t feel a pang of loss as he reached up to pluck the octokitten from her perch. It wasn’t as if he intended to take the little creature with him on their criminal endeavors, but having the eight-legged furball cling to him with all the trust in the world was… nice. “Come on, Your Fluffiness. Your coach has arrived at its destination.” he told the octokitten, trying to get her to loosen her grip.

The kitten, however, was not about to relinquish her ride without a fight. Hissing at Juno and Tim’s combined effort to remove her, she slithered down Juno’s back and fastened herself, once more, around his left leg, burying her face in his pantleg. Any attempt to coax her into releasing the leg was met with defiant yowling and an even tighter hold.

Juno could only be thankful that Rita wasn’t here recording the whole fiasco. It would have gone viral: Crazy Space Pirate and Criminal Novice No Match for One (1) Kitty-Cat.

“We need to try something else,” he told Tim after the gunner’s third attempt to bribe the kitten with food. “She’s not gonna give up any time soon, but _I’m_ starting to lose sensation in this leg, and I don’t plan on getting a peg-leg just to complete the who ‘space pirate’ aesthetic.” He hobbled to a crate and sat down, careful not to squash the octokitten in the process.

“Let’s wait till she falls asleep, then,” Tim conceded, sounding vaguely disappointed by the missed opportunity of an amputation. “They’re easier to remove when they’re unconscious.”

Sitting down, Tim t began to play once more, his long fingers moving deftly along the guitar’s neck. As the music filled the room, Juno realized that it was the first part of the song he had heard outside the storage bay.

_O my love, what madness can this be?_

_In your place a monster I do see_

_I only hoped to understand this work that drains you so_

_But I find this metal demon, spinning falsehoods into gold_

Juno remembered a coat in a hotel room, a coat with infinite pockets containing fragments of the man with a thousand names and no name at all. He remembered gilded aliases that sat on his tongue like lead and tasted of poisonous deceit. He remembered the horror of looking into the mind of the man he loved and saw nothing but blood.

But was not all he remembered.

Juno also remembered a gift, smuggled into his life on a note tucked between his sofa cushions. He remembered a young man who gave up the life he could have lived to save the home he had never known. He remembered Nureyev, weary and vulnerable in his room on the Carte Blanche, entrusting his name to Juno despite everything that had happened between them.

Then, abruptly, Tim stopped playing.

“Something’s missing,” he said, scowling down at his guitar as if it was somehow responsible.

“You know you can’t play every instrument for this composition on your own,” Ivy pointed out without tearing her gaze from her book.

“I know that!” Tim snapped. “I mean there’s something missing in the lyrics, something that will really give an ‘umph’ to the emotional impact…”

“You need the other half of the story,” Juno blurted out before he could stop himself.

Tim turned towards him, his mechanical eyes enormous and staring. “What was that?”

Juno felt like kicking himself; he really needed to get this “saying his thoughts out loud” tendency under control.

“You need the full context for this song to make sense,” Juno said, thinking about a room bathed in red light, about how a horror story became a tragedy once you had enough context. “You have the perspective of this… Finder, and, yeah, it’s pretty traumatic for them to find out that their lover can’t go through metal detectors. But we know nothing about the person being found out. What do they want from the Finder? Did they love the Finder back? If we only have the Finder’s side of the story, it’s just cheap horror. But if it turned out that the one who was found was actually in love with the Finder, it gets…” he scrambled around for the right words, before settling for a lame “…sadder.”

Tim, however, didn’t seem bothered by Juno’s vocabulary, his brows furrowed in concentration. “We can put a counterpoint in the second verse: a response to the first verse’s accusation…” He began playing again, this time a variation of the melody of the second verse. “And the third verse would be another counterpoint… let it seem like the Finder and the Found are conversing while they both miss each other’s points…”

Juno watched as Tim muttered under his breath and wove additional tunes into his song. He felt the same jarring sensation again, seeing Tim’s guitar bumping into the gun at his belt whenever the gunner changed positions.

“Why does this matter so much to you?” He asked, when Tim paused to retune the guitar. “With all due respect, but you guys don’t seem like the kind to give a damn about how other people feel, so why does it matter to you that you have to tell this story right?”

“We take our roles as storytellers rather seriously,” Tim looked up with a faint smile. “If the stories can’t move our audience, we’re shite performers.”

“Yeah, but why does that matter to you?” Juno persisted. “Your crew has killed and burned and pillaged so many worlds; why should… emotional resonance be a problem for you guys?”

Ivy had resolutely hidden herself behind her book. Tim was silent for a while, plucking the strings of his guitar.

When Tim finally spoke, he sounded much, much older than he looked. “When you’re immortal like us, you start to know how everything ends. Hell, we even know how _we_ would go out one day. And once you know that to be a fact, you start to… not want certain things to end. If we get a song or a story just right, eons later there will still be people telling the stories they’ve heard from us. And if a story is always being told…” His fingers strayed to the pocket watch hanging from his waistcoat; it was a battered thing, covered in dents and scorch marks. Whatever words engraved on its surface would have been long gone, but Tim touched the surface as if he was tracing familiar letters. “Maybe it hasn’t really ended, and you get to pretend that the people in it hasn’t left, not really.”

Juno was keenly aware that the conversation was headed towards an area rife with Stuff he was not prepared to unpack in front of two strangers and 100 octokittens. He was also aware that he was somewhat responsible for the situation, which meant that he was going to have to resolve it _somehow_.

“Listen, I—” he began, but Tim looked down and pointed, speaking in a loud stage-whisper, “Look!”

The octokitten’s eyes were closed, and her breathing was even, whistling in and out like a little kettle. Together, Juno and Tim extricated the sleeping kitten from Juno’s leg and placed her in a bundle of Tim’s trench coat, where she curled into a ball, snoring in blissful oblivion.

“Home at last for our little Odin,” Tim announced with contentment.

Juno stared at him. “ _What_ did you just call her?”

“Odin,” Tim repeated. “Y’know, like the Asgardian conqueror? She’s obviously spent the last hour colonizing you.”

“That name sounds like an air raid siren.” Juno shot back.

“Then what do you have in mind?” Tim lifted his chin in challenge.

Juno looked at the octokitten’s bronze fur, gleaming under the light like burnished metal.

“Andromeda,” he declared.

“Very original,” Tim sneered.

“Says the guy who wants to name a cat after a military leader,” Juno retorted.

“Alright, first of all, that is not a cat; second of all—”

Ivy looked up from her book. “Unless you want to deal with that kitten waking up and missing her lady-friend, I suggest you quiet down or take this outside. I’m at a very interesting part, and you are distracting me.”

It was then that Juno had an idea: it was a stupid idea, the sort of ridiculous stuff you’d expect to see in one of Rita’s streams, but it would be _fun_.

“Yeah, let’s take this outside.” He grinned at Tim. “How about we settle this with a friendly competition?” He tapped the blaster at his side.

Tim’s smile was all teeth and anticipation. “I’m listening,” he said as he followed Juno into the hallway.

“See that thing over there?” Juno pointed at a brown shape on the wall at the end of the hallway, about 80 feet away from them.

“You mean Jonny’s spare goggles hanging on the wall?” Tim said, over the sound of his mechanical eyes zooming in and focusing. “You want to use those as the target? Because I would love to use those as the target.”

“You’re making it way too easy, Gunpowder,” Juno laughed. “I’m thinking we remove the goggles from the wall _without_ breaking them.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Tim gave him an incredulous look. “How do you suppose we do that? Shoot the wall hard enough that they fall off on their own?”

“You can try that if you want,” Juno said, airily. “Or you can just give up and let the _cat_ have a normal name.”

“You wish,” Tim growled. He pulled out his pistol and gestured, “Ladies first?”

“Age before beauty, old man,” Juno gave him his best shit-eating grin, the kind that invited black eyes and split lips.

Tim’s stance would make any trainer in HCPD cringe hard enough to go into cardiac arrest, but Juno could see that the man had been doing this for longer than humans can comprehend. There was a terrible, effortless ease in the way he raised his pistol and aimed for the target, his long hair swept behind his shoulder to clear his view.

He fired. There was a “ping” when his shot hit the wall, but the goggles remained where they were.

“Better luck next time, pal,” Juno offered as they switched places.

Tim glowered at him. “Save that luck for yourself.”

“You know, I heard that sportsmanship is a good look on people. You should try it.” Juno said, sighting along the barrel of his blaster. He knew exactly where to shoot, and now all that remained was to ensure that his shot reached to target.

He exhaled, slowly, letting the tension in his shoulders bleed out. He would never get to fire as many shots as Gunpowder Tim, but every shot Juno Steel had taken, he had made it count. He tightened his finger on the trigger, and fired.

At the end of the hallway, the goggles fell to the floor.

“How?” Tim demanded. “How did you do that?”

“The trick is to know _what_ you’re aiming for.” Juno was well aware that the grin on his face was probably not helping his “good sportsmanship” talk, but Tim’s bewildered expression was far too priceless for him to not enjoy.

“You were focusing on getting the _goggles_ off the wall,” Juno said as they approached their target. “But you missed the thing that was holding them up.” Crouching down, he picked up a coat hook, still smoking from where Juno shot it. “Get rid of the support, and the whole thing comes off.”

“And you didn’t break the goggles,” Tim sighed, dropping the goggles he had been examining.

“So, you are saying that I—” Juno crossed his arms and waited.

Tim heaved an even more aggressive sigh. “Yes, you can give the octokitten any silly, unimaginative name you want,” he groaned.

“See? It’s not so hard once you let it all out, buddy.” Juno smirked.

“I hate everything you stand for,” Tim grumbled. “And you know what? That name isn’t even—”

He was cut off by a flash of bronze-colored fur zooming past him and colliding with Juno.

Juno smiled as the octokitten clambered onto his shoulder and nuzzled his face. “Hey, Andromeda,” he said. “Did you have a nice nap?”

The kitten responded by bonking her head against his, purring like she had finally made her way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kabert hasn't allowed Juno to have one (1) good day, so I guess it's now my divine duty to give my lady-love that One Good Day.  
> Ivy is forever locked in a passive-aggressive custody battle with Tim for the octokittens.  
> Tim's pocket-watch once belonged to Bertie.  
> As always, kudos and feedbacks are much appreciated; they are what's keeping this word-goblin going.   
> Next up: The Thief with No Name meets the pilot with nothing left but his heart


End file.
